After materials are mined from the ground, portions of the material that have no beneficial use or value are typically separated or extracted from the portions that have beneficial use or value.
In the extraction of the valuable fractions from value-bearing mineral ores, the first step in beneficiation is generally comminution to fine particle sizes prior to extraction of the fine valuable fractions from the gangue material by means of froth flotation or lixiviation, for example. An alternative treatment, prior to conventional methods described, is ore sorting, where gangue material is detected by means of electronic sensors and removed from the value-bearing mineral ore at coarse particle sizes by physical means. Currently, there are various methods of sorting ore. In some examples, valuable fractions may be recovered from the ore stream by means of electronic sensors. In practice, this method results in unacceptable loss of valuable fractions due to lack of sensitivity in current electronic sensors. Furthermore, low capacity of these sorters unacceptably reduces the rate at which the valuable material can be extracted and processed.
The drawings have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be expanded or reduced to help improve the understanding of the embodiments of the present invention. Similarly, some components and/or operations may be separated into different blocks or combined into a single block for the purposes of discussion of some of the embodiments of the present invention. Moreover, while the invention is amenable to various modifications and alternative forms, specific embodiments have been shown by way of example in the drawings and are described in detail below. The intention, however, is not to limit the invention to the particular embodiments described. On the contrary, the invention is intended to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the scope of the invention as defined by the appended claims.